Not All The Good Art In Southwark Is At The Tate Modern

Last night we headed down to the Nolias Gallery in Southwark for The Power of Three, an exhibition of three artists which we previewed here.

The Nolias gallery is located just round the corner from Tate Modern and is hidden away amongst railway arches and council estates. On entering we were slightly thrown by the layout of the place with a glass partition rather annoyingly separating off one half of the gallery. We grabbed a drink and went for a wander, pausing only to read the press release for the exhibition.

The exhibition is based around a survey carried out by one of the artists, Philippa Beale in the early 1980s. She asked members of the public what type of art they liked and were prepared to buy, what size they liked the pieces to be and a number of other questions about their tastes. It turned out that "bright, primary colours" and "ships and the sea" were the most liked styles and themes. The exhibition is an attempt to both update and respond to that survey.

So Philippa Beale's work mostly consisted of sea landscapes and birds with very dense colours and evocative images. Her work is full of life, the only problem being that we wanted to see it on a larger scale than the small canvases she had on display. Meanwhile, Jane Humphrey's work was a study of texture and much of it seemed very much based on observing nature and wildlife, but truth be told we were underwhelmed by it, mainly due to the repetitive nature of what she had on display.

Finally, there was Alice White (see inset) who we were too shy to approach in person but whose work was both the most engaging and had more personality to it than any of the other pieces present. Her main portion of the show consisted of a series of monoprints (see above). They were of variable quality: Some we adored and some less so, but hers was the only work to truly grab us and make us want to see more. She made herself the subject of the works in a lot of ways, which is no bad thing, but she avoided falling into a pit of self obsession.

The only criticism we have of the exhibition is that the concept wasn't clear enough throughout and that only Philippa Beale's work seemed to have any link to the blurb explaining what the exhibition was about. But we may have missed something and understand that it's part of an ongoing project and that there will be an updated survey in the next few weeks.

Anyway, we had fun and deeply wished we had deeper pockets so we could have purchased one or two particular pieces we liked. The exhibition runs until 10th December at the Nolias Gallery, 60 Great Suffolk Street and is well worth a peek.